"A real Right protects you from the State. A fake Right requires the State to force someone else to serve you.
One of the most persistent confusions in modern politics, and one of the most destructive, is the idea that anything desirable can be rebranded as a “Right.” Healthcare, food, accommodation, internet access, “dignity,” “safety,” and whatever else is fashionable this week. If it is nice to have, the Left insists it must therefore be a Right.
On the hierarchy of needs, these things are certainly important. But importance is not the same as a Right. And pretending otherwise leads to consequences the Left never seems willing to acknowledge.
The Problem With Calling Everything a “Right”
Let’s take food. If food is a “Right,” then someone must produce it. If the State declares that everyone has a Right to food, then the State must also have the authority to compel people to grow, harvest, transport, and distribute it. Rights, in this framing, become claims on other people’s labour.
And once you accept that logic, you’ve accepted the logic of slavery.
This is why socialist States, from the USSR to Mao’s China to modern-day North Korea, always end up reinventing slavery under a new name. If the State has the authority to declare that you must produce food for others, then the State has the authority to force you to do it.
The rhetoric is compassionate. The mechanism is coercion.
Healthcare: The Same Logic, Different Packaging
Healthcare is no different. I’ve seen people on the Left argue that doctors trained in New Zealand should be compelled to remain here, compelled to accept lower incomes, compelled to work where the State assigns them. The language is always the same: “fairness,” “equity,” “the public good.”
Strip away the euphemisms and the argument is simple: Doctors must be forced to serve.
If healthcare is a Right, then doctors become a resource to be allocated. Their labour is no longer theirs. It belongs to the State.
That is not a Right. That is conscription.
Housing: The Politics of Compulsion Dressed Up as Compassion
The same logic appears in housing. Residents are “greedy” if they don’t give their houses to the homeless. Property owners are “hoarders” if they don’t rent out every spare room. “Land banking” is treated as a moral crime.
The solution, inevitably, is compulsion. Force people to give up what they own. Force them to house others. Force them to comply with the State’s definition of “fairness.”
Again, this is not a Right. It is a claim on someone else’s property enforced by the State.
A Brief Historical Reminder
It is interesting, though perhaps not surprising, that the political tradition most enthusiastic about redefining Rights as compulsory obligations is the same tradition that historically defended slavery.
The Democratic Party in the United States was the party of slavery. Today, in 2026, it is still enthusiastic about slavery by another name: the idea that your labour belongs to someone else if the State declares it so.
The branding has changed. The mechanism has not.
What a Right Actually Is
A genuine Right is something that cannot be compelled from another person. It is not a claim on their labour, their property, or their time. It is not a demand that someone else must serve you.
A Right is something you possess by virtue of being human — not something that requires another human to be conscripted.
The classical formulation remains the best:
- Life
- Liberty
- The pursuit of happiness
They are Rights because they do not depend on coercion.
The Practical Problem: Who Pays?
Even if we set aside the philosophical issues, the practical ones remain.
If food is a Right, who pays for it? What kind of food is a Right? Is coffee a Right? Are avocados? Is bread? What if you don’t like bread, or are allergic to it?
If healthcare is a Right, who provides it? Are doctors forced to work? Are taxpayers forced to pay? Are hospitals forced to treat regardless of cost?
If housing is a Right, whose house becomes the State’s next “solution”?
The moment you declare something a Right, you must also declare who is forced to provide it. And that is where the Left’s rhetoric collapses into authoritarianism.
The Final Point
A Right that requires coercion is not a Right. It is a demand. And demands enforced by the State are not compassionate. They are compulsory.
The modern Left has confused needs with Rights. Needs are universal. Rights are constraints on power.
When you turn needs into Rights, you turn citizens into servants.
And once you accept that logic, the only question left is: Who gets enslaved next?
The Three Tests of a Real Right
1. A Right does not require someone else’s labour. If your “Right” depends on forcing another person to work — doctor, farmer, builder, landlord — then it is not a Right. It is a demand dressed up as morality.
2. A Right does not require confiscation of property. If your “Right” requires the State to seize someone’s house, income, land, or time, then it is not a Right. It is redistribution enforced at gunpoint.
3. A Right does not require coercion to deliver it. If your “Right” exists only when the State compels compliance—through regulation, fines, mandates, or conscription—then it is not a Right. It is an obligation imposed on others.
A genuine Right protects you from the State. A fake Right empowers the State over everyone else.
Colinxy regularly blogs at No Minister - this article was sourced HERE
9 comments:
Interesting
The case being put seems to be that a genuine right doesn't need enforcement by the State. But a right can only be realised when that is exactly what happens; without State backing, rights become mere platitudes.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948 was an UNGA resolution and therefore not legally binding (although some argue that it comes under 'customary law'). It led to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966. The latter is more in the way of a 'framework convention' which sets out goals that members ought to strive towards given their resources; this includes a decent standard of living, health care and education. The former is legally enforceable and includes such basics as the rights to life, freedom from slavery, liberty and security of the person, a prompt and fair trial, freedom of movement, freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, freedom of expression, and to hold opinions. Specialised conventions such as CEDAW (for the elimination of discrimination against women) and the convention on the rights of the child (up to age 18) address the special needs of vulnerable groups that the State needs to address.
OF COURSE rights impose obligations on others. The right to education imposes an obligation on society and the State to ensure that all kids can go to school. The right to health care imposes an obligation on society and the State to ensure access to health care. It is stating the obvious. But that is not to say that any individual should be forced to become a teacher or a nurse.
The "Three Tests of a Real Right" at the end of this article do not relate to human rights as I or any student of human rights law understand them.
So much of what is now called a right involves 'free' stuff. Last century the reciprocal part was an honest attempt to stop being reliant on the free stuff as soon as you could.
Sadly, free stuff soon becomes an entitlement, followed by needing more free stuff. The idea of it coming with a personal responsibility to try has been long forgotten. An Oliver Twist mentality, but with the humility replaced by anger if refused.
Communism. To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability - whether they like it or not. This last bit is the bit that always gets overlooked by the utopian socialist dreamers.
At the risk of being called flippant may I say that the 3 inalienable rights of: 'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness' are actually under threat as efforts are made to take those rights away. Life threatened by crime, poor health systems and unaffordable food, power and housing. Liberty threatened by a police force tasked with looking for imagined crimes (e.g., hate speech) and a society that consists of members always looking to be offended. Finally, the pursuit of happiness is threatened by the factors described above. In other words, once we enter 'life' on this planet we have to fight for existence and it took Charles Darwin to give shape to this; our only 'rights' being our puny efforts at survival using what biological weapons we have at our disposal, and passing on of our genetic DNA in the hope of perpetual life. An existential crisis no less.
When discussing rights, one must first start with there are no rights, none whatsoever. The world owes the human inhabitants absolutely nothing. There is no right to life, to health, freedom, shelter, food, clothing, water, education, to be loved… There are no rights! This must first be acknowledged and valued for the reality it is. The moment one becomes untethered from this basic truth we run into problems and fail to properly value and temper our humanity.
Rights are that which we afford each other.
They are expressions of consciousness. Consciousness is not uniform among the human population.
The issues under discussion appear to centre on the devaluation of the tenants of rights where people have moved into expectations, expansion and redefinition, no longer tempering our humanity. What can save us can also destroy us if not tempered with wisdom. The shifting values of a society as alluded to in the article.
Another example; where once we held and aspired to the concept, right of non-discrimination by ethnicity, one people, right of freedom and equality of citizens. NZ now interprets this to mean segregation by Iwi/race where different people have different rights and privileges based on ethnicity. Others’ views and will are imposed on us all and we are told what to think and what to do. All in the name of enlightenment while achieving the opposite to enlightenment, enslaving the NZ population and fracturing society. The rights and freedoms of all citizens, including those of mixed Maori heritage, have been substantially eroded and damaged. The concept of democracy NZ nurtured for well over a century and half is itself under attack. It is another example where we can become untethered from core values and rights. Society can degrade itself rather than strengthen itself.
There must be a tempering of our humanity. Without this measure our human nature can take us in unhealthy directions including what I think you are trying to express in your article. Kind regards
This is not correct.
Using the food example, if the State declares that everyone has a Right to food, that does not mean the State has the authority to compel people to grow, harvest, transport, and distribute it.
It means, instead, that the State will spend your tax money so as to provide food. That is not the logic of slavery. If it were, all taxation for welfare would be slavery; the dole, invalid benefits and superannuation, for example.
I'm not saying there isn't a problem worthy of consideration, but the argument given here to characterize it is not rational.
Is it not true also that the actual claiming of rights automatically puts one into servitude and traps one into whatever boundaries are attached to those rights. For example a right to free education will come packaged with a lot of mumbo jumbo and other aspects that one may not like at all. Uplift your right to 'healthcare', by delegating all of that to others and, well, good luck to you. For as long as the left 'progresses' with instilling rights everywhere we will be going backwards in very real terms.
The newest right is from South Korea where there is a decision to have the right of everyone to free AI . Apparently this is part of the overall AI debate in America where big tech. charges big prices for AI .
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